Tom Gallagher > Quotes

“We loved to light fires at night, to keep warm, to show the authorities in Mayo and Dublin that we were unafraid of lighting a big fire on the edge of the Main Dublin-Ballina road, or just to let the heavens above know that we, a few Mayo lads, were down here on earth and alive, despite the odds. We loved the joy of sitting around an open fire having the craic like they did on cattle drives across the American prairie ages ago.”
― Tom Gallagher, Tara's Halls: Growing Up in Hard Times in Ireland: An Inspiring Memoir

“It seemed that no matter what we did on the land, no matter how much we worked or how hard we worked or how fervently we prayed, nature’s forces were mostly working against us. We had to offer up a portion of our work and bounty to the heartless gods of rain and wind and frost and snow, to rats and mice and birds and beetles, to foxes and rabbits and hares and snails, to millions of insects of all manner and kind, to tinkers and gypsies and beggers and blight. And still we lived and the battle went on – with God’s unwavering help, as Mom would say.”
― Tom Gallagher, Tara's Halls: Growing Up in Hard Times in Ireland: An Inspiring Memoir